The number of foreign citizens who received Russian citizenship in 2019 increased by 1.5 times compared to the previous year, Izvestia reported referring to data from Rosstat and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In January-September of this year, 285 thousand passports were issued to foreigners, which is 48% more than in the same period of 2018.

According to published data, 17,000 Armenian citizens received Russian passports for this period.

The absolute leader among those who received Russian citizenship were the citizens of Ukraine (146 thousand people), following the citizens of Kazakhstan (35 thousand), Tajikistan (30 thousand), Armenia, Uzbekistan (14 thousand), Moldova (11.5 thousand).